Anglet - La Madrague Surf Stats

The figure shows the variation of swells directed at Anglet - La Madrague over a normal May. It is based on 3440 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coast so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Anglet - La Madrague. In the case of Anglet - La Madrague, the best grid node is 38 km away (24 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These happened only 10% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was WNW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Anglet - La Madrague and offshore. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Anglet - La Madrague, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical May, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Anglet - La Madrague run for about 90% of the time.

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